Achingly lonely and stranded a thousand miles from home, college freshman Gianna Nero nearly takes her own life by stepping in front of an oncoming bus. A stranger saves her from that grisly fate, in the form message sent by a soggy-mouthed alien, s...
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Gianna balanced on the edge of the curb while her fellow students darted past her and crossed the street in the last seconds before the traffic lights turned green. She clutched her empty backpack to her chest, rocked heel to toe as she saw a campus shuttle bus barreling towards the crosswalk, bobbing on worn shocks. She waited until she could make out the expression on the bus driver's face--dull eyes, slack jaw--the look that comes from going in circle after meaningless circle. Gianna understood that look.
Her heart thudded in her chest. Her old life was a thousand miles away now, reduced to a string of empty long-distance relationships--infrequent emails from her high school friends in Chicago, aloof texts from her boyfriend, passive-aggressive letters from her father scribbled on stationary smelling of his Tuscan cigars. None of it mattered. It'd all be over soon.
She leaned forward, lifted a leg, ready to end it all.
"Whoa there, space cadet," a voice said from behind her. A hand came down on her shoulder and reeled her in from the threat of oncoming traffic back safely onto the curb. The bus whooshed by, taking her breath with it as it passed. "You gotta wait for the little white man to tell you to walk."
It was what's-his-face, from Applied Thermodynamics, sat a couple rows ahead of her and spent most of his time playing Candy Crush on his phone instead of taking notes. He was always eating oranges and guzzling Topo Chico. What was his name? Hector? Juan? Jose?
"Oh, hey," Gianna muttered, rubbing her sweaty palms against her jeans.
"You watching the address on the Main Mall?"
"The what?"
"The Presidential Address. Have you been buried under a rock the past two days or something?" Hector-Juan-Jose reached into his backpack and pulled out a cheap plastic alien mask. The rubber band snapped loose as he tried to stretch it around his head. "Shit!" he grumbled, then sucked at his finger. "Anyway, word on the net is that it has to do with aliens. Real aliens. Not like some microscopic fossils they found on Mars or anything. So you going, or what? I want to get a good spot before things get crazy." He pushed his thick bangs out of his face and looked at her intently, a crooked smile on his lips. Hector-Juan-Jose was the first person who'd said more than two sentences to her all week. He was nice, but a little weird, like he was trying too hard. Still, Gianna trembled at the thought of being alone right now.
"Okay," she said softly, but when the crosswalk light turned again and the students resumed their migration, Gianna stood there petrified. Hector-Juan-Jose extended his hand, soft and moist in hers.
"Come on. White man says it's okay." He nodded up at the walk figure on the crossing sign.
The crowd thickened considerably by the time they reached the Main Mall, a thousand strangers pressing against her, many wearing aliens masks--a typical mish-mash of Sci-fi pop culture, plus a few that Gianna didn't recognize. She kept her fist clenched around the tail of Hector-Juan-Jose's t-shirt as he wedged deeper into the student body, towards the steps in front of the bell tower. Gianna thought she would suffocate from the mix of perfume and B.O. reeking in the late August heat.
A projection screen was set up at the top of the stairs, bearing an image of the President of the United States washed out by the noontime Texas sun. His words, however, blared from several sets of speakers--words deep and foreboding. "WE ARE NOT ALONE."
She took Hector-Juan-Jose to bed that night. The sex was awkward--more weird than nice, sort of like he was trying too hard. But she didn't regret it. Half the planet was probably screwing right now. Gianna guessed that's just what people did after seeing alien life for the first time, and learning that in thirty short years they'd be living among us. Fear. Excitement. Uncertainty. But for all of the emotion on the surface, Gianna figured it all came down to one primal thing: Gotta make sure there's more of us than them.
Sweaty and stinking of each other, they stretched across the length of his twin-sized bed and watched the rebroadcast on his laptop. The message had taken eighteen months to reach Earth, and promised the sharing of knowledge and technology in exchange for asylum. At least that's what they'd figured out from the wet clicks and whistles of the aliens' language. There were large gaps in the translations, during which Gianna would concentrate on the alien's mouth. Breva was his name. If she squinted really hard, he might pass for human. He had the sharp features of a rocker, almost feminine. She noticed hints of amphibian ancestry here and there--rubbery skin that glowed ever so slightly and a long tongue that didn't seem to want to fit completely inside his mouth. She guessed that he was probably handsome to his own kind.
"Do you know how lucky we are?" Hector-Juan-Jose said, face lit up by the screen. He placed his hand at the small of her back. "We're majoring in aerospace engineering on the cusp of all of this alien technology. We'll be creating things that we never could have imagined!"
"I want to shake Breva's hand," Gianna blurted out, surprising herself. "Or however the Sussurine greet each other. I want to welcome them to Earth. Akuotraaam sur dekpth Fevcha." She'd memorized the first line of Breva's message... the words were so alien in her mouth, like she was trying to gargle with a bad sinus infection, but she thought she did a pretty decent imitation.
Hector-Juan-Jose laughed. "We'll be what? Fifty years old then? That's a long time to wait just to say hello."
Gianna sat up, pulling the sheets over her chest. Fifty. She tried to imagine herself at fifty. Wrinkles. Gray hair. Achy joints. Hot flashes. Gianna realized this was the first time she'd thought about her future in a long, long time. She exhaled sharply.
Maybe she'd look into changing her major to linguistics in the morning.
